Okay, so can anybody tell me why Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine are being prosecuted for refusing to reveal their sources, over a piece of information that was only actually published in the column of a third person, Robert Novak, who is NOT being prosecuted? Other than…

You would think that, after being married to the man for more than half my life, I’e2’80’99d be used to my husband’e2’80’99s alien view of the world. But every so often, clear evidence that he dwells on another planet manages to take me aback. Take Uma Thurman. Actress, right? Sleek, sexy, big screen. A while…

Jane Fonda is going in for hip replacement surgery. Jane Fonda. Hip replacement. Okay, NOW I feel old.

This is a pretty strange job I have, when you come right down to it, considering that I’m a grown woman with grey hair and a mortgage. I swim in the morning, not so much because it’s good for me and makes my arthritis go away for a while, but because the undemanding action encourages…

There are some things too important to leave to the experts. Politics is one. God is another. Today we’e2’80’99re talking about politics, although since we’e2’80’99re also talking about ethics, some may glimpse God in the background. Politics is the science of government, but at root the word polis just means a gathering of people, that…

On this, International Women’s Day, let us pause for a moment of quiet celebration. Celebration that the women of the world are doing so very well. That the women of developed countries such as this, at any rate, earn as much as men for doing the same jobs. That half our elected officials. university professors,…

I love the idea of working on a book that’s just coming to life, yet due to be published in June. I remember reading in one of Vita Sackville-West’s diaries about how she finishes a book the first week of May one year, and in the middle of June–the same year, mind–she goes up to…

We writers live for the small rewards. It’s perfectly lovely, of course, to hit the New York Times list or win a prize or get a starred review from Publishers Weekly, but deep down, the thing that keeps a lot of us writing is internal. There’s a lovely old English word, “quick.” Nowadays we think…

(And if anyone can tell me how to make an accent mark on this text, I’d be grateful–the above is supposed to have one over the o, so it’s en espanol. And that could use a tilde, as well. Alas, I really should return to the stylus and clay tablet. Anyway…)** I love local newspapers.…

…in which we continue our tale of the downstairs neighbors. After having skunks spray in the house last January, I am, as you might expect, highly sensitized to their presence: one whiff, and all my panic alarms clang and hammer. So a few weeks ago when my ears and nose told me the black-and-white charmers…